Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Facebook Promises to Be "Less of a Dick" under New Terms of Service

MENLO PARK, Calif. — (TYDN) Facebook, the world's largest social-media platform, unveiled a new user agreement Tuesday promising it would be "less of a dick" to its more than 1 billion account holders, TheYellowDailyNews has learned.

Facebook, which has come under repeated attack over user privacy, announced the changeover in language buried in its new 50,000-word terms of service. The development, which turned heads from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, comes weeks after it was revealed that the Menlo Park, Calif.-based publicly traded company secretly experimented with user feeds by altering comments in them.

It was the first time Facebook announced it would be "less of a dick," analysts told TheYellowDailyNews in exclusive interviews.

"When Facebook changes its terms of service, it usually means user privacy is affected," said Goldman Sachs social media analyst Alan Rukmelstein, in an exclusive interview with TheYellowDailyNews. "This is a game changer."

Two lines in the new user agreement say: "We keep hearing from our users that their privacy matters. So, for now on, we promise to be less of a dick when it comes to your privacy."

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declined comment.

Facebook said in a statement that users' privacy comes first, and that how the company treats its users' data is openly disclosed in its terms of service.

"This is a free social media platform and everything is out in the open," the company said in an exclusive e-mail to TheYellowDailyNews. "Nobody's head is being held at gunpoint forcing them to use our service."